Six Pack
Six unusually beautiful comedies. By Matt Prigge mprigge@philadelphiaweekly.com
Nothing Sacred (1937): Because humor thrives on relaxed improvisation and timing, you don’t see too many comedies that fret much over the other elements of filmmaking: lighting, camerawork, etc. But not everyone is so cavalier about technique. There’s sly skill in the “invisible” direction of many classic comedies, although workhorse William A. Wellman went one better with this cynical, largely Ben Hecht-scripted screwball: He shot it in still-nascent Technicolor, an extravagance typically reserved for prestige pictures. There’s a fascinating war here between technique and material, exacerbated by how no print today, not even the restoration just released on disc by Kino, can duplicate the film’s once-splendorous colors. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957): Frank Tashlin was an animator before he turned to live action; he didn’t really change his style. His films with actual human beings are crass, bold and plastic, his stars (including Jerry Lewis) outsized. His highmark remains his second with busty living cartoon Jayne Mansfield (after The Girl Can’t Help It), a satire as visually striking as it is scabrous. Playtime (1967): A silent comedian who arose well into the talkie era, Jacques Tati remains comedy’s great stylist, every frame meticulously fussed-over with the obsession of a classic painter. Young Frankenstein (1974): The film positively nails the look and feel of Universal Horror. And this from a director who, with The Producers, couldn’t even direct.
Love and Death (1975): For his last “early, funny” film, and itching to be serio-comic, Woody Allen hired no less than Belgian cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet (Au Hasard Balthazar, The Young Girls of Rochefort ), all so his comedy would look gorgeous. It’s an idea Woody would explore further with Manhattan, although he’s been subsequently known to waste D.P. greats (Vilmos Zsigmond, Melinda and Melinda; Harris Savides, Whatever Works). n Monty Python and the Holy Grail
By Sean Burns sburns@philadelphiaweekly.com
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baby-sat in Shoot ‘Em Up, tried to pass himself off as an ineffectual family man in the altogether regrettable Derailed, and then fumbled with single fatherhood in The Boys Are Back. And even though everybody else has, let us not forget Owen’s turn as the outraged father of a teen girl targeted by an Internet sex-predator in director David Schwimmer’s never-quite-released Trust. Owen’s lone character trait in Intruders is that he really loves his 12-year-old daughter Mia (Ella Purnell)—who has been given the last name “Farrow” in what I can only assume is some sort of inside joke that doesn’t land. She’s found a child’s half-written short story hidden inside of a tree (the first of about a thousand visual tropes that director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo openly shoplifts from Guillermo Del Toro) that tells the tale of a nocturnal predator known as Hollow Face. Bearing a possibly actionable similarity to the Dementors from the Harry Potter pictures, Hollow Face lacks a visage of his own, and thus haunts children’s bedrooms late at night looking for a face to rip off and make his own. Sure enough, as soon as young Mia recites the tale in her English class, this fantasy becomes reality, with this exceedingly slow-moving, not-particularly-frightening creature turning up in closets after bedtime. In order to pad out roughly 20 minutes of story into a two-hour running time, we’ve got Hollow Face menacing another child, in another place. Somewhere in Spain, Star power: Clive Owen (left) was once destined for super stardom. young Juan (Izan Conchero) also seems to have been writing this deeply underwhelming short story about a That’s just not the case in Intruders, also starring Ella Purnell. robed intruder without any features. His mother (Pilar Lopez de Alaya) turns to a local priest for counsel. Played Clive Owen’s daddy issues are getting out of hand. by the always reliable Daniel Bruhl, he can’t decide if the The tall, rakish Brit seemed poised for superstardom child needs an exorcist or a psychologist, and if you can’t after his breakout role in Mike Hodges’ hard-boiled 1998 figure out by roughly the halfway point where Intruders’ Croupier. Handsome with a seedy air of menace, Owen disparate storylines are going to (shockingly) merge, then smoked a lot of cigarettes and chose his words careI envy you, because you have probably fully, sardonically purring quips with never been to a movie before. a palpable disdain for everybody else Intruders But did I mention yet that Clive Owen onscreen, and by extension the entire really loves his daughter? Too much, Grade: D world. We all thought he was going to be the next James Bond, or at the very Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo in fact, according to a shrink played by the overqualified Kerry Fox. In a giant least an international phenomenon. Starring: Clive Owen, Carice van mouthful of bunk science that made me But Clive Owen’s career seems to Houten and Izán Corchero feel sorry for all the actors involved, it is have fizzled out, to a point where he’s explained that their bond is so intense turning up in a knockoff, secondhand the two are just sharing nightmares, prethriller like Intruders, which, after premiering at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, is finally sumably brought on by Owen’s PTSD after a workplace accident on a skyscraper rig that doubles as one of the most making a brief pit stop in our area on its inevitable journey hilariously fake green-screen sets I have ever seen. to a Redbox kiosk near you. As is too often the case these Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo made his bones with days, Owen gives a negligible performance, tamping down the WTF thriller Intacto, and did a shockingly sturdy job his natural gift for sly insinuation and instead trying to be of turning the quickie cash-in sequel 28 Weeks Later into the world’s greatest dad. a pushy Iraq war analogy. His heart doesn’t seem to be in The first line of every biographical article about Owen Intruders, which visually borrows a bunch of spare parts always mentions that his father was a failed countryfrom Pan’s Labyrinth and The Others, creeping along to a western singer who abandoned his family when young foregone conclusion that doesn’t even make much sense. Clive was only 3 years old. While I usually hesitate to inIn lieu of an actual climax, we’re stuck with Owen modulge in cheapjack Freudian explanations for why movie notonously reminding his daughter how much he loves her careers sometimes take oddball turns, there’s really not and reassuring her that he will always be there. (We get very much else to say about Intruders. it, dude.) It’s enough to make you long for the flinty, pissy Look at all the times Owen has played a nurturing father Clive Owen of old, destined for stardom and unencumfigure, even begrudgingly shepherding the last bastion bered by children. n of humanity in his best role, Children of Men. He also
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Being Flynn
Clive Owen tries to become film’s father of the year in Intruders.
P H I L A D E L P H I A W E E K LY March 28 - April 3, 2012
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): The rest of Monty Python grumbled when Terrys Gilliam and Jones—who had adopted reins as directors of their first proper narrative film outing—decided to labor as much attention on look as they did on comic material. Along with being funny, this is a gorgeously realistic look at the Middle Ages—grimy, gloomy, muddy and miserable. And are the bloody armor duel’s a nod to Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac ? Maybe!
Daddy Issues
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